Canto CCXXVI

It’s been fifteen years since my first spot—
a busy open mic in Hammersmith,
Twenty one and shitting bricks, caught

in the glare of stage lights, already half pissed.
The audience’s general indifference;
my mumbled lines—unheard and barely missed.

How many stages have I been on since?
A few hundred? Perhaps—they tend to blur
into each other, like the countless pints

I sometimes needed to speak out my verse.
The damp squibs outnumbered the thunder strikes.
My old ambitions may become my curse

and yet I’d never choose another life.

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